Journal
NUTRITION IN CLINICAL PRACTICE
Volume 32, Issue 4, Pages 526-532Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC
DOI: 10.1177/0884533617692527
Keywords
nutrition screening; mortality; hospital length of stay; malnutrition; nutrition assessment; emergency treatment; inpatients
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Background: There is an international consensus that nutrition screening be performed at the hospital; however, there is no best tool for screening of malnutrition risk in hospitalized patients. Objective: To evaluate (1) the accuracy of the MUST (Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool), MST (Malnutrition Screening Tool), and SNAQ (Short Nutritional Assessment Questionnaire) in comparison with the NRS-2002 (Nutritional Risk Screening 2002) to identify patients at risk of malnutrition and (2) the ability of these nutrition screening tools to predict morbidity and mortality. Methods: A specific questionnaire was administered to complete the 4 screening tools. Outcomes measures included length of hospital stay, transfer to the intensive care unit, presence of infection, and incidence of death. Results: A total of 752 patients were included. The nutrition risk was 29.3%, 37.1%, 33.6%, and 31.3% according to the NRS-2002, MUST, MST, and SNAQ, respectively. All screening tools showed satisfactory performance to identify patients at nutrition risk (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve between 0.765-0.808). Patients at nutrition risk showed higher risk of very long length of hospital stay as compared with those not at nutrition risk, independent of the tool applied (relative risk, 1.35-1.78). Increased risk of mortality (2.34 times) was detected by the MUST. Conclusion: The MUST, MST, and SNAQ share similar accuracy to the NRS-2002 in identifying risk of malnutrition, and all instruments were positively associated with very long hospital stay. In clinical practice, the 4 tools could be applied, and the choice for one of them should be made per the particularities of the service.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available